Iran Without an Expansionist Project
Al Rai, Kuwait, June 28
All that truly happened was that President Donald Trump emerged, at least on the surface, as the victor from the Iranian-Israeli confrontation, having capitalized on Iran’s urgent need for a ceasefire in a war during which he had initially floated the idea of regime change before pulling back. Will Iran accept Trump’s statements that he does not seek regime change, along with its own missile strike on the Al Udeid base in Qatar, as enough to claim that it overcame its war with Israel and emerged victorious?
Iran is positioning itself as triumphant despite the heavy losses it suffered, and despite having been compelled to abandon its nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missile program, and its network of regional proxies such as Hezbollah. Preserving the regime itself became Iran’s overriding priority after Israel succeeded in taking the war directly into Iranian territory, assassinating a significant number of military leaders and nuclear scientists, and exposing the deep vulnerabilities of the Iranian regime.
One telling sign of the weakness of the Islamic Republic was the language its officials used throughout the conflict, appealing to international law and highlighting their supposed commitment to legal principles. Suddenly, the Islamic Republic remembered international law, conveniently forgetting its long record of promoting its regional ambitions through assassinations, violence, coercion, and sectarian incitement.
One need only look at its domination of Lebanon, a project that began more than 43 years ago with the Revolutionary Guard’s first deployment to a Lebanese army barracks, the Sheikh Abdullah barracks in Baalbek. The Lebanese experience illustrates the broader collapse of Iran’s expansionist strategy, which effectively unraveled with Bashar Assad’s flight from Damascus on December 8, 2024.
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For decades, Iran had pursued its goals in Lebanon, often under Syrian cover, with tireless determination and the tacit acceptance of Israel, which itself is hardly a model of respect for international law. Iranian influence in Lebanon culminated in the 2023 war in support of Gaza, through which Tehran demonstrated that it ultimately controlled the Lebanese state’s decision-making power via Hezbollah.
Iran’s sudden rhetorical embrace of international law and the UN Charter is deeply ironic, given that since the 1979 overthrow of the shah, the Islamic Republic has repeatedly shown contempt for these very norms, most memorably during the 444-day hostage crisis at the US Embassy in Tehran beginning in November 1979. It is hardly necessary to look far to see that Iran has never truly respected international law but instead followed its own rules, exploiting America’s periodic willingness to treat Iran as a useful boogeyman for pressuring Gulf states into viewing the United States as their only protector.
This dynamic, marketed under the slogan of “exporting the revolution,” has played out for decades. It is useful, even today, to remember Iran’s activities in Lebanon from the very first days, including the kidnapping of David Dodge, the president of the American University of Beirut, who was eventually released from Tehran after being routed through Syria.
Successive American administrations have too often remained silent about Iran’s outrages. In the 1980s, they stayed silent about the kidnappings of Americans such as CIA station chief William Buckley and Col. William Higgins, who was working with the UN’s international observer mission in southern Lebanon. US administrations likewise ignored Hezbollah’s violence, which ultimately prompted the withdrawal of US forces from Lebanon after the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut and the suicide attack on the Marine barracks near Beirut airport on October 23, 1983.
Nowhere in Iran’s regional record does respect for international law appear—unless one truly believes that the assassination of Rafic Hariri and his companions on February 14, 2005, was carried out in accordance with the United Nations Charter on Human Rights. That killing was designed to crush the only serious attempt to revive Beirut and Lebanon after decades of civil war, which began with the conflicts of April 13, 1975. This is precisely what President Joseph Aoun should have noted, instead of ignoring it, during the celebration of lighting up Martyrs’ Square and Nejmeh Square.
Theoretically, the Israeli-Iranian war has stopped. The direct American intervention on Israel’s behalf during this conflict will stand as one of its most consequential chapters since hostilities erupted on June 13, 2025. However, the cessation of open warfare does not mean the challenges facing the Iranian regime have vanished. Those challenges persist, despite the collapse of its regional expansionist project, the uncertainty now surrounding the regime’s own survival, and the demonstrated ability of Israel to penetrate both Iran’s security services and its society at large. Ultimately, is the Iranian regime, in its current shape, viable without the engine of regional expansionism, no matter how many victory celebrations are staged to suggest otherwise?
Kheirallah Kheirallah (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)
